42 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[March, 



ox is generally incased in a yellowish glutin- 

 ous substance, which might be mistaken for 

 fat. The flesh is full of little bladders of 

 fluid, and the blood also is half fluid, which 

 becomes congealed on cooling. The vitals 

 are of a livid color. 



The tsetse fly is generally found within a 

 a few miles of water, in rich sandy ridges 

 near marshy spots, and generally in mopani 

 or mimosa forests. I have known them to 

 shift their positions, or encroach on new 

 ground, or leave parts where fire-arms have 

 driven the game out of a district. They are 

 mostly only found within a certain range 

 from water. To the buftalo in particular the 

 insect is more attached, and often moves 

 about with them in the rainy season.— C/iajj- 

 man's S. Africa. 



BUILDING MATERIAL. 



The question, which material is best for 

 building poultry houses ? depends so much on 

 circumstances that it is impossible to give any 

 definite reply, for the man of means may con- 

 sider that brick, stone and hard wood is best, 

 while the man in close circumstances will 

 naturally consider common pine lumber pre- 

 ferable, considering the smallness of his 

 purse. 



As in most cases poultry houses are tem- 

 porary structures, comparatively speaking, it 

 is best ordinarily not to build of other than 

 wood, and this does not in tiie least prevent 

 the expenditure of an almost endless amount 

 of cash and labor on ornamentation, if thought 

 desirable or advisable, or the pocket-book 

 will admit of it. As a rule, brick or stone 

 poultry houses, besides being more expensive 

 than wooden structures, are also very liable 

 to be damp, and the dampness engenders 

 quite a formidable array of ailments and dis- 

 orders, which go far toward making the 

 proflts of poultry breeding at least very un- 

 certain aud problematical. They can be built 

 so as to avoid this dampness, in a great meas- 

 ure, but as the dampness is due more to the 

 want of care and attention afterward, in re- 

 gard to ventilation, the case is not materially 

 affected. 



All wooden poultry structures, most of 

 which, while they may not be very elaborate 

 when finished, can be built by almost any one 

 who has fair mechanical abilities, are vastly 

 improved in their lasting qualities by keeping 

 the surface covered from the air and sun by 

 the application of paint, or some similar pre- 

 servative, to the boards. Some use tar ; but 

 this, while it preserves from decay, makes 

 the house too somber looking. Cheap paint, 

 made for outside work, is the best, while 

 lime, in the form of whitewash, is not unfre- 

 quently used, as it gives everything a bright 

 and cheerful appearance, and some claim thaf 

 by soaking into the wood it greatly improves 

 the durability of the boards. The insect ene- 

 mies of poultry, too, are not friendly to lime 

 in any form. 



Common, unplaned boards make a very 

 good, cheap house, with hemlock studding, 

 bracing, etc., but if it is desired to have a 

 smoother finish, planed boards (planed on one 

 or botli sides) can be used. If you have plenty 

 of time and but little spare cash plane them 

 yourself, and have plenty of shavings where- 

 with to kindle fires; but when the cash is 



plenty it pays better to buy the boards already 

 planed by machinery. — Co-operative Poultry 

 Post. 



FARMING DOES PAY. 



Next to money, there is nothing like sav- 

 ing time. Since I first followed the plow 

 when a boy (for fish worms) I have always 

 made it my object to make the most out of 

 every minute, and I can assure you that my 

 style of farming has paid, from the fact that 

 at my present time of life there are not more 

 than one or two mortgages on my farm, and 

 they could easily be removed by the money. 

 In agricultural economy there is nothing like 

 doing two things at once, and my most dis- 

 tant relatives aud friends say that I am a hu- 

 mane, easy farmer, and I lay claim to being 

 industrious. Now you know every farmer 

 loses a great deal of time just in grinding his 

 axes and knives. I have changed all this. 

 By a slight contrivance on the other side of 

 the grinding-stone, I have attached a self- 

 feeding straw-cutter ; so when the boy turns 

 the grind-stone, the straw-cutter goes at the 

 same rate, and thus two objects are accom- 

 plished at the same time— if the boy does 

 growl, and growling doesn't make it any 

 easier, goodness knows. I can't see how it 

 could. 



In seeding time one of my boys goes into 

 the field and scatters the grain broadcast with 

 ease at the same time he pulls behind him a 

 light harrow of my own construction, aud the 

 seed is harrowed in. Thus you readily see 

 the expense of a drill and several horses is 

 saved. I am trying to study out a plan for 

 attaching a clodroller behind the harrow to 

 save the boy the trouble of going over the 

 field the second time, at wliich he might 

 growl. Hoeing corn and potatoes is slow 

 work ; so I furnish my boys with handles that 

 have two hoes on them, and of course they 

 do double the work that one does, as you will 

 allow and in harvest my cradles have a back 

 blade as well as a front one, so they cut back- 

 ward as well as forward ; and as the old 

 wood-saw only cuts as it goes down through 

 a stick, I have had one made for my boys that 

 also cuts coming back, and thus it saves half 

 the time. When "agents" of any kind call 

 on me, or even my neighbors, 1 invite them 

 to the barn and get them to help me to husk 

 corn, while I listen to their talk ; and you see 

 I get a good deal of work done while I am 

 getting a good deal of valuable information, 

 and nobody loses any time— but them.— 

 American Aoricultural. 



HOW TO COOK AN OLD HEN. 

 I may, however, mention an experiment 

 that I have rnade lately. I killed a superan- 

 nuated hen — more than six years old, but 

 otherwise in a very good condition. Cooked 

 in an ordinary way she would have been un- 

 eatably tougli. Instead of being thus cooked, 

 she was gently stewed about four hours. I 

 cannot guarantee to the maintenance of the 

 theoretical temperature, having suspicion of 

 some simmering. After this she was left in 

 the water until it cooled, and on the following 

 day was roasted in the usual manner, i. e., in 

 a roasting-oven. The result was excellent ; 

 as tender as a fuUgrown chicken roasted in 



the ordinary way, and of quite equal flavor, 

 in spite of the very good broth obtained by 

 the preliminary stewing. This surprised me. 

 I anticipated the softening of the tendons and 

 ligaments, but supposed that the extraction 

 of the juices would have spoiled the flavor. It 

 must have diluted it, and that so much re- 

 mained was probably due to the fact that an 

 old fowl is more fully flavored than a young 

 chicken. The usual farmhouse method of 

 cooking old hens is to stew them simply ; the 

 rule in the midlands being one hour in the 

 pot for every year of age. The feature of the 

 above experiment was the supplementary 

 roasting. As the laying season is now coming 

 to an end, old hens will soon be a drug in the 

 market, and those among my readers who 

 have not a hen-roost of their own will oblige 

 their poulterers by ordering a hen that is 

 warranted to be four years old or upward. If 

 he deals fairly he will supply a specimen upon 

 which they may repeat my experiment, very 

 cheaply. It offers the double economy of 

 utilizing a nearly waste product and obtaining 

 chicken-broth and roast fowl simultaneously. 

 —Popular Science Monthly. 



THE CODLING WORM. 

 Perhaps no insect has given the apple 

 orchardist so much trouble as the codling 

 moth, and any tactics that will give victories 

 over this long triumphant enemy will be 

 hailed with shouts along the line. Hear what 

 Mr. A. G. Tuttle, for many years President 

 of the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society, 

 and a leading nursryman of that State, says : 

 Mr. Tuttle is testing over one hundred varie- 

 ties of Russian apples, and what he says is, 

 that he has discovered a remedy— or rather a 

 trap — for the moth, that has proved to be a 

 complete success. This is the trap : Take 

 shallow pans or saucers, and place some very 

 strong apple vinegar in them, and hang about 

 the branches of the trees. The smell of the 

 vinegar attracts the moths, and they are 

 caught and drowned in the same. Mr. 

 Tuttle says he has caught over forty cod- 

 ling mohts in one of these pans in a single 

 night. He counts it a great success. He says 

 he notified Caarles Downing, a leading au- 

 thority on fruit in this country, of this matter, 

 and of his success ; and that Mr. Downing ad- 

 vised him to disseminate the information 

 through the medium of the press, as it would 

 be of immense benefit to the fruit growers of 

 the country. Certainly this is important, if 

 true. 



THE FLY'S NOSE. 

 Prof. George Macloskie, of Princeton Col- 

 lege, recently read a paper before the New 

 York Academy of Science on " The Proboscis 

 of the House-fly." The wall behind the desk 

 at which the professor stood was decorated 

 for the occasion with diagrams showing higlily 

 magnified sections of the body of the common 

 house-fly or Musca Domestivus. There were 

 also some pictures of exaggerated cockroaches 

 and a representation of an etiormous lobster, 

 more than three feet long — so large in fact 

 that the teeth in his " spoon-shaped jaws," 

 could be distinctly seen. As for the picture 

 of that instrument of torture, the proboscis of 

 the house fly, it resembled both in shape and 

 size, a rifle with the bairel broken off where 



